


Love Forever

by Delenn (goddessdel)



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bittersweet Ending, Darla is a vampire, F/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, Post-Season/Series 02, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-09-04
Updated: 2003-09-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:27:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22647139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goddessdel/pseuds/Delenn
Summary: A conversation that needed to happen finally does, with some interesting questions and answers. How long is forever, and is promising it really too much?
Relationships: Darla (BtVS)/Lindsey McDonald (AtS), Minor or Background Relationship(s), implied darla/angel
Kudos: 1





	Love Forever

**Author's Note:**

> Izmaldi, this one is for you darling, because it’s as close as I’ll ever get to writing them as a pairing. Plus, aren’t you proud? My first fic with “that special someone” as a main character!
> 
> Written some time ago. But still worth sharing, I hope.

She’s staring at him, so intent on reading him and he has the sinking feeling that she really can if she looks long enough. So he looks down, away, trying to force out his feelings in a breath. “I… I…” _love you,_ he’s almost afraid should the words get out. She’ll realize just how much control she already has on him.

Now it’s her turn to look away as his eyes bashfully come back up to rest on her body and it makes her uncomfortable still, maybe because she knows exactly what he means. “I know you do.” She pauses, unsure how to continue on that topic, but her brain is nagging at her about something else, something she has to say, to anyone, “I made him for me, you know; to be with me. Always.”

He knows this already, could anticipate some version of what she had just said, but it didn’t stop him from hoping that maybe, just maybe, things had changed enough that it wouldn’t be true. She loves someone other than him and always will, no matter how much changes, how he changes. “Things aren’t the same anymore; he’s not the same.”

Slowly, deliberately, she brings her eyes level to his, settling her gaze upon him in a manner that suggests that she is wise beyond the look of her body. She is, and his rational amuses her slightly and troubles her more. “You’re missing the point.”

Sarcasm is his weapon of choice, one that he has long cherished in his career of being turned down, second-guessed, and hurt. Always the one being hurt, but he doesn’t think she’ll really hurt him, not him, so at the last moment the sarcasm changes slightly into eager questioning. “Am I?”

She feels tired now, can see the youth shining in his eyes, the optimism, the belief in her, something she has long forgotten existed. But she can see something else in his eyes: possession. Ahh, yes, a man still, and she’ll be harsh but not cruel now, no matter how she feels. He has to understand that she can’t allow this, but she’ll try to be gentle, if she even remembers how. “Yes. And you’re wrong; so much is the same, but not us. I know that, just as I know you love me and he doesn’t.”

Every time she mentions _him_ he wants to yell and scream and pull his hair out at the same time, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t because he still hopes and because he knows her now, knows that she doesn’t feel the same as she used to, that she could feel for him if she’d just let herself. “Then be with me. Come away somewhere where we won’t have to think of him. I know I don’t want to.”

A small sigh, it’s so tempting sometimes to just leave, abandon it all. But it’s not meant to be, even if she could, really _could_ , so much still wouldn’t work. “I can’t, you know that.”

Bitterness is biting at the edges of his mind, an old familiar friend, something he’s cultivated and cherished in recent years but that he still enjoys the defeat of. Not to be, not today, the old pain and anger back yet again because it will never really leave him. “Why?”

“I can’t love you,” so simple and harsh she knows, but necessary because she can’t allow this situation to develop and it’s true if only part of the truth.

He’s bordering on extremes now, hot and cold, one minute he loves this gorgeous creature before him yet the next he is wondering at her deceptive cruelty. Still, he can change her mind, if she’ll just stay long enough; he knows he can change her mind. “You don’t know that, maybe in time…”

She smiles at him slightly, sadly, and nods because yes, if she stayed long enough, he could probably convince her of many things, but she won’t stay long enough because he isn’t prepared to see what’s really inside of her. What she is capable of. Something else to remember, to bring pain, always her job: bring pain to others and thus torture herself. “Yes, I do; that was the point before you interrupted me.”

Now he really is angry, that she can take this all in so calmly, without a stray breath, just reply as though he were nothing and knows nothing. Well, if he is such an idiot she’ll just have to tell him what he supposedly missed. “Enlighten me?”

Choosing her words carefully, she starts, trying to make it clear that this isn’t about wants, needs, or anything. It’s about her, about things that nobody marked down in history but are still permanently scarred on her soul. So long ago but she still can’t trust that it has all changed; for her, it hasn’t. “I made him, that’s why I can love him and not you. He was mine, my boy, I could control him and he let me. You’re out of my control. A man. I just… I can’t.”

It takes a moment for him to digest this calmly without getting up and screaming his head off or bawling like a baby; he doesn’t know which it would have been. Finally, he voices words to things he has always known but tried to ignore when it was the problem all along. “You still love him.”

His confusion is understandable, but he is off, he can’t read her because she won’t let him, because while she can read every line on his face hers seems smooth still. It’s not nearly so simple to her as he makes it all out to be, not black, not white, just the usual blood red she’s accustomed to. “Not like I used to. Not nearly so much as I hate him for destroying my life.”

Hate is how he feels also, and he wants to tell her _not just your life, mine too, ours,_ but he won’t because then she would laugh and call him melodramatic or something of the sort. At least this opens a new possibility that he is willing to bend over backwards to accept. “You like me at least, don’t you?”

Amusement, as always, but also slight confusion; she thought she had made herself clear, speaking of things he so detests, being cruel for the sake of being kind. “Yes.”

Tentatively, he begins to ask the very last thing he can think of her, knowing that it could work out and that it should. This is what he needs to heal, and he thinks that she needs time to heal also. “Then come anyway. I don’t care who you love right now; we need each other. I’ll take care of you.”

She’s genuinely touched by his still bitter naivety and his youthful optimism. So much so that she’s willing to be patient a little longer, to explain yet another pained part of herself as best as she can without giving up everything. “I can’t just do that. I’m four hundred, at the least I know myself, and I’ll hurt you. I’ll hurt you so much, and it’s not right, not fair. I can’t love you, and I’ll have to control you. You don’t deserve what I’ll do to you.”

He allows her words to really soak into his mind before he replies. He reads between the lines and sees what she can’t tell him and what he should have already known. He does, after all, know what she’s talking about. “I’ve been hurt before.”

“Not like this.” _You haven’t been hurt by someone you love so much you would die for, not yet, at least._ She knows that it is better to end this now before she opens up old wounds for herself and new ones for him. “I don’t want to be the one to break you, Lindsey.” And this time it’s only the truth that comes out.

Resignedly, he nods, shortly, curtly but accepting of the honesty in her words. It’s not a threat, he knows, but she has just clearly stated that she will break him if they go away together, not because she wants to, but because she feels she has to. Painful facts, and now she’s getting up to leave. “This is it then, Darla, you’re leaving forever, just like that?”

Turning before the open door, she graces him with a smile, promising that someday she’ll at least visit, and perhaps by that time she’ll be strong enough to be what he needs. It hasn’t happened in four hundred years, but a lot of things have happened to her recently that never had before, so it’s possible. “Maybe. I don’t know.” And, for once, she really doesn’t.


End file.
